24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
Dr. Schultz also made notable progress with his studies on the 
extensive material that he collected in Venezuela, finishing a report on 
the Characinidae and completing manuscript for the families Gymno- 
tidae, Cichlidae, Cyprinodontidae, Dasyatidae, Tetradontidae, and 
Centropomidae. 
The curator of insects, Dr. E. A. Chapin, made further progress 
with: the manuscript embodying the results of his investigations 
on the beetle genus Hippodamia and continued work on other sections 
of the Coccinellidae. 
Dr. R. E. Blackwelder, associate curator of insects, continuing his 
work on Bulletin 185 of the National Museum, “Checklist of the Col- 
eopterous Insects of Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and 
South America,” submitted the manuscript for part 3. Parts 1 and 2 
were published during the year. 
Austin H. Clark, curator of echinoderms, completed part 4 of Bul- 
letin 82, “Monograph of the Existing Crinoids,” except for assembling 
the plates. He also published “Iceland and Greenland,” the fifteenth 
of the Smithsonian’s War Background Studies, and, in collaboration 
with Dr. E. H. Walker, assistant curator of plants, prepared material 
for the biological section of another volume of this series dealing with 
the Aleutian Islands. 
All divisions in the department contributed to the Navy’s “Survival 
on Land and Sea,” published in December, to “A Field Collector’s 
Manual in Natural History,” recently issued by the Smithsonian, and 
to the preparation of nine mimeographed leaflets for distribution to 
correspondents inquiring about the animal and plant life of the 
Southwest Pacific. 
Geology.—As in the other departments of the Museum, several 
members of the staff of the department of geology are on military 
detail. The researches of the head curator, Dr. R. 8. Bassler, have 
been limited to three projects; first, his monographic study of Lower 
Paleozoic corals; second, a paper on the giant Paleozoic Ostracoda 
known as the Leperditiidae; and third, a continuation of researches 
on American Ordovician crinoids and cystids contained in the 
Springer collection. The manuscript and illustrations of all three 
have been more than half completed. 
Curator William F. Foshag was occupied the entire year in Mexico 
with his supervisory work for the Geological Survey in surveys for 
strategic minerals. In addition, he spent some time at the Paricutin 
Volcano making observations and collecting material for the Museum 
exhibition series. 
E. P. Henderson completed several analyses of new meteorites. 
“The Metallography of Meteoric Iron,” a monograph by Dr. Stuart H. 
